Steven Spielberg Hires Coen Brothers to Write Cold War Thriller

Steven Spielberg has been lining up projects left and right, but one might become the front-runner for his next movie with this latest announcement: Joel and Ethan Coen have been hired to write Spielberg’s currently untitled Cold War thriller, which is tentatively set to star Tom Hanks.

This news comes from The Hollywood Reporter, and they say that the film is about the real life story of James Donovan, a lawyer who had to negotiate with the KGB for the release of downed U2 spy plane pilot Gary Powers. There was a draft written by Matt Charman, so it’s unknown if the Coens are coming in for a page one rewrite, or if they’re coming in to fix problems, but it’s likely the latter as the film is supposedly nearing a September start date.

This follows the Coens’ work on Angelina Jolie‘s upcoming film ‘Unbroken,’ so it’s possible that with their moderate budgets and occasional successes, the Coens have found script doctoring a good way to work in the system on bigger movies while it also may help them continue to have autonomy on their directorial efforts. Previous to this the Coens have only had two scripts they didn’t direct make it to the big screen: their collaboration with Sam Raimi on his 1986 film ‘Crimewave,’ and the recent remake of ‘Gambit’ — though it seems they had little to do with the final product of the latter. Regardless, Steven Spielberg working with Joel and Ethan Coen is like mixing chocolate and peanut butter.

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